Chain of Hearts
by jkdg3461
Summary: Post HBP. Harry is locked into twelve, Grimmauld Place until Voldemort is weakened... It looks like never. In his darkest hour, he gets an unexpected visitor, who might just be what he needs to save him from himself... DISCONTINUED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
1. Solitude

**Part I – The Boy Who Hid**

**Chapter One**

"…_And I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding her a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her…"_

"No!"He woke, shouting, covered in cooling sweat, his scar aching. Nothing was worse than this waiting, this constant apprehension, this… This loneliness. The morning outside, filtering through his grimy window and stained curtains, was grey, with the tiniest rays of sunshine bravely piercing the monotony.

Harry had been forcibly locked into twelve, Grimmauld Place after he had destroyed the sixth Horcrux – of course he didn't _want_ to be there. He was supposed to wait there until the oblivious Voldemort was weakened enough for him to deal the final blow, fulfill the prophecy, and kill the Dark Lord once and for all.

The old house with the mounted elf-heads was the safest place for him to hide. Kreacher was there to serve him (as house-elves live to do, though Kreacher was somewhat reluctant), and the secret-keeper was dead. Dumbledore was in no position to be telling anybody where Harry was, entombed in white marble on the Hogwarts grounds.

Though safe it may be, the house that he had inherited from his godfather was too big – much too big for only a screaming portrait, a senile house-elf and the "Chosen One". Assorted members of the Order tried to drop in from time to time, though it was rather hard, seeing as both Muggle and wizarding worlds were a war zone.

So, for the best part of the week, Harry was left alone with his thoughts. He was so lonely that sometimes he even considered knocking something over to wake Mrs. Black up, just to hear the sound of another voice… Even if it _was_ screaming about he, the half-blood, had besmirched the noble house of Black and _Toujours Pur_ and all the usual stuff.

_Toujours Pur_ was such a stupid motto for a family, Harry thought. Always Pure. Not even the Blacks could stay pure. Not even he, Harry Potter, could still recall the innocence of his first year at Hogwarts: green eyes wide behind his glasses, always naïve, always trusting, chasing after Rememberalls on broomsticks and releasing dragons in the Astronomy Tower. Voldemort had made sure of that.

Apart from a few Death Eaters, there had been no problem with finding and destroying the fourth and fifth Horcruxes sequentially. Ron, Ginny and Hermione had been there with him. They had kept him strong and hopeful. But it all had to go wrong. It was all Harry's fault. Not even the Chosen One, the boy of the prophecy, could hold on to someone forever.

**chainofhearts**

Not even his closest friends came to visit him anymore. They, too, had gone into hiding, and Harry was their secret-keeper. They could hardly look at him anymore – why couldn't they understand that what had to be done, had to be done?

Why couldn't they just understand that it was even harder for him than it was for them, that they didn't even have to watch it at all, that he didn't even have the courage to go through with it?

Why didn't anybody understand?

Just as he thought this, there was a soft thump from below Harry's bedroom. Someone was in the kitchen. Snatching his wand and glasses from the bedside table, he went to greet the visitor – or kill the intruder.


	2. An Unlikely Pairing

**Chapter two**

"Hello?" Harry calls, his voice hoarse from silence. His right hand grips his wand nervously, his left clutching at the banister of the stairs. He swings open the door to the kitchen and…

"Hello?" he calls again. "Where are you? Who's there?"

"Over here," says an all-too-familiar voice. "Blind, Potter?"

Harry turns to look at the figure standing near the sink. The light filtering through the (dirty) gauzy curtains illuminates his blonde silky hair, but cannot disguise the look of disdain on his face. Harry's jaw drops.

"_Really_, Potter," Draco Malfoy says calmly. "You'd think you'd just seen the dead, or something."

"I thought you _were_ dead," Harry retorts, gathering his jaw from the floor. He is still standing awkwardly in the doorway with his wand still raised. "What are you doing in my house?"

"Sit down," Malfoy says, moving to sit down himself. Harry edges into the kitchen, but still doesn't sit. "Suit yourself, then."

Harry glares at Malfoy. He did not appreciate being told to sit in his own house, nor did he appreciate _Draco Malfoy_ – of all people, honestly! – bursting in on his own pity party.

"How did you get in here? You're not even supposed to know where this is," Harry says.

"Dumbledore told me," Malfoy says, choosing to ignore the look of surprise on Harry's face and gazing at his pale hands in a bored way instead.

"Is – Dumbledore – how?" Harry stammers.

"He told me _before_ he died, stupid," Malfoy says. "Speaking of old friends, where's the weasel and the Mudblood?"

Harry sighs, "You never change, do you?"

Malfoy looks up at him sharply. "For your information, _Potter_, I have changed in ways that _you_ wouldn't be able to understand. I take it that you've still not completed that Horcrux task that Dumbledore set you? Shameful – and you call yourself a Gryffindor?"

"How did you know about the Horcruxes?" Harry demands, finally taking a seat directly across from Malfoy.

"Professor Snape, obviously," Malfoy says, rolling his grey eyes at the ceiling.

"How did _Snape_ know?" Harry snaps. "That traitor, if he…"

Harry can't even finish the sentence. He's still shocked about Malfoy's sudden appearance – or, rather, _re_appearance – in _his_ home.

"Professor Snape wasn't a traitor, Potter," Malfoy says perfectly rationally, looking Harry in the eyes. "He was just a very good, albeit misunderstood, actor."

"Oh, really?" Harry snorts, not breaking eye contact. "Where's his alliance, then?"

"Professor Snape was neither working for the Light, nor for the Dark," Malfoy says, with the air of one explaining something to a five-year-old child. "He was the personification of the true meaning of a Slytherin. He served no master, and he cared for nothing but his own wellbeing. Or so he told me."

Harry looks at Malfoy quizzically. "You're speaking in past tense."

Malfoy finally broke their eye contact and looked down at the table.

"Well, Potter," he said softly. "That's because he's dead."

Harry stares incredulously at Malfoy.

"No way," he says.

"He is," Malfoy insists, apparently intrigued by the patterns in the wood grain and not meeting Harry's gaze. "I was there when it happened."

Harry's expression softens. "Malfoy, I –"

"Save it, Potter," Malfoy says quietly to the table. "I don't need your pity. Professor Snape was the closest thing to replacing that sad excuse of a father – don't _agree_ with me, you prat – currently rotting in Azkaban. I had to watch him be killed by the people I thought were my own friends. I'm currently disowned and homeless, my mother is missing and I suspect she's been taken by Death Eaters, and my wand is broken so I can't fix my bruises properly, but if you think that I am going to let you feel sorry for me, then you have another think coming."

"Nice use of Muggle literature," Harry says, squinting at Malfoy. "But, honestly, Malfoy, I don't see any bruises on you."

"That's because I told my, um, attackers that if they bruised my face, I'd hex them into the next millennium," Malfoy says, with the tiniest hint of a smile on his downcast face.

Harry is saved the bother of a response by Kreacher ambling into the room, reluctantly bowing, and declaring in a bored way, "The half-breed's head is in the living room fire and is asking for Harry Potter. Kreacher wonders, is he here to talk to the half-blood soiling the family heirlooms of Black and intruding on Kreacher and his mistress?"

**chainofhearts**

"You have to understand that it's not your fault, Harry," Remus Lupin's head says from the fire, five minutes later.

"But it is," he protested. "I could've stopped her, I could've… It didn't have to be this way, Remus."

"If you'd stopped her," Lupin says calmly. "That means that Voldemort would've won."

"Ginny didn't have to _die_, Remus!" Harry shouts, tears beginning to fill his eyes. "There has to be some other way, but now it's too late! The entirety of the wizarding world is against me, and I can't even tell them _why_ she had to die!"

Draco Malfoy, from the doorway of the living room, watched tears fall down Harry's cheeks, the firelight casting an eerie glow on both their faces. _So we are united by loss, then. What an unlikely pairing._

"I'm sorry, Harry," Lupin says quietly. "But she did."


	3. Floo Powder and Sympathy

**Chapter three**

"She didn't," Harry whispers hoarsely, the firelight dancing weirdly on his glasses. "It could've been stopped. If I hadn't been so stupid in the Chamber of Secrets –"

"Harry, I swear to you," Lupin says. "She was too far gone by the time you arrived in the Chamber. He was there, Harry. He was already inside of her. You couldn't have done anything."

"You weren't _there_," Harry croaks. "She was fine. I could've done something, I could've stopped Voldemort, and I should've…"

"You need to stop blaming yourself for something that couldn't be stopped," Lupin says quietly. "Sometimes these things just have to happen. You can't stand in the way of them. If you do, Harry, Voldemort will win. Some things must be sacrificed for a good cause."

"Ron can't even look at me," Harry mutters. "He thinks I'm weak. I couldn't do it."

He closes his eyes and he hears, again, that voice, mocking him.

"…_**And I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding her a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her…"**_

He sees that shock of red Weasley hair, brown eyes round with shock and realization, then set with determination.

"_If you won't do it, Harry… Then I will!"_

"…_**Powerful enough to start feeding her a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her…"**_

_Ron and Hermione's faces at this proclamation. Harry's hands, trying to wrest the wand from Ginny's grip. A Horcrux: no. Ginny couldn't – she just couldn't – be a Horcrux._

"…_**to start pouring a little of my soul back into her…"**_

"_Don't make me hex you, Harry! Let go of my wand!" She wrenched the wand from his hands and backed herself onto a ledge._

"_Ginny, _don't_! Ginny… I love you… Please…"_

"_Harry, you know I love you. I wouldn't have come if I didn't."_

"_If you love me, then don't do it!"_

"_You know I have to. Don't lie to yourselves, it's the only way."_

_He'd begged for her not to do it, they all begged her. But high on that mountain, where the wind whipped their hair about their faces and stung their eyes painfully, Ginny raised the wand to her head and shouted, "_Autonova Kedavra_!"_

"…_**a little of my soul…"**_

_The blast lifted her two feet in the air and slammed her onto a nearby boulder. Her limp body slid down the side and landed in a heap at its base. Harry and Hermione went rushing to her side instantly. Ron went pale and collapsed onto a rock. But they were too late. They were all too late. Ginny was gone, her brown eyes staring sightlessly into the grey skies, her red hair tangling in the wind, her heart finally at rest._

"…_**my soul…"**_

_They buried her that same day on the dark mountain._

"I loved her, you know…" Harry says to Lupin, whose head is looking sympathetically at him from the fireplace.

"Harry, she knew it," Lupin says, a cloud passing over his face where it sits in the flames. He adopts that expression that he sometimes gets when they talk about people they love dying.

"She knew you loved her before she died," he continues sadly, "Which is more than I can say about Padfoot, and you can't take it for granted. Sometimes I wish I'd just – HARRY JAMES POTTER, WHAT THE HELL IS _HE_ DOING HERE?"

Harry spun round, furiously rubbing his eyes free of tears. Malfoy is standing directly behind where Harry kneels on the worn hearth-rug.

"M-Malfoy?" Harry says, squinting up at him.

"Again, Potter. Are your glasses really working all that well?" Malfoy says, dropping to his knees next to Harry, but his voice lacks its usual sneer.

"How much did you hear?" Lupin demands from the fire.

"Enough," Malfoy says simply.

"Why are you in the Order headquarters? Did Kingsley authorize this?" Lupin snaps, accidentally inhaling some ashes and choking.

"You'll have to ask him," Malfoy says idly. "Dumbledore told me the address, right before I was sent to kill him."

"Back when he thought he could trust you?" Lupin spits the words and the ashes. "Back when he thought that a sixteen-year-old boy was too cowardly to shoot the Killing Curse at him?"

"Yes," Malfoy says, the tone in his voice changing quite rapidly. "He was right about that, because, if I remember correctly, I _was_ too cowardly to kill him. You-Know-Who _blackmailed_ me into it, if I remember correctly. He's got my mother, and _if she's lucky_, she's dead instead of in _Cruciatus_ on a stone cold floor, and I can't bloody do _anything_ about it. And Professor Snape is dead, I've nowhere else to go, so it's not like it was my _choice_ to be stuck here!"

"Snape's dead?" Lupin says, his eyes widening in horror. "Who did it?"

"My good old friends, Crabbe and Goyle, of course," Malfoy says quietly. "Why should you care, anyway? He's the one that killed dear old Dumbledore in the end. Shouldn't you say he got his just desserts?"

"What did he say before he died?" Lupin demands.

"That – that's none of your business," Malfoy says, his cheeks coloring.

"Malfoy," Harry says quietly. "If it's important, the Order needs to know. If you're holding things from the Order, in the house that _I_ own, which just so happens to be the _headquarters_ of the Order, then I promise you that you will be the guinea pig in their next demonstration of Unforgivables."

"You can't _do_ that!" Malfoy cries, in a voice twice as high as normal. "If my father…" his voice trails off pathetically.

"If your father hears about this," Lupin finishes, smirking slightly. "He can do nothing but sit in his cell and brood over it. Oh – I have to go. Harry, extract whatever information you can out of him. I'll pop in later."

"Right," Harry says, not looking at Malfoy. "See you, Remus."

When Lupin's head has disappeared from the dying embers, Harry turns to Malfoy. To his surprise, Malfoy wraps his arms around his knees and mutters "Leave me alone."

"Don't worry," Harry says quietly. "I wasn't about to ask."


	4. Firelight Musings

**Chapter four**

The door to the lounge room shuts quietly behind Harry as he leaves; Draco is left curled on the hearth-rug, staring into the dying embers of the fire. The flickering light of the flame casts an eerie glow into his light hair.

There he sits for the remainder of the day, watching the fire until its fiery dance is imprinted on his mind, even as it flickers and dies. When Kreacher arrives on Harry's orders, bearing a loaded tea-tray, Draco refuses him.

_Life is a fragile thing to be resting on Potter's shoulders_, Draco muses.

He is right; but even though Harry is the Chosen one, he is scorned by the wizarding world for allowing Ginny to die – some suspected that he had killed her himself. All but the Order were told that her death was a horrible accident. In a way, it was.

After a tiring battle with his thoughts, Draco decides that he'll do the right thing – for once.

_But you're safe here_, a voice in his mind argues, even as he enters the kitchen, looking for Harry. _You shouldn't jeopardize your own safety for Potter's sanity._

_Everyone out there is out to kill either me or Harry_, a more dominant part of his mind says in what seems like Professor Snape's voice. _If I leave, I'll be tortured for his whereabouts. The Dark Lord will know, he will always know. He won't care that I'm not the Secret-Keeper. He'll torture me until the location is ripped from my throat._

_But Potter hates me_, a tiny voice says. _He's got enough to deal with, without being babysitter for a spoilt prince like me…_

"Where's Harry Potter?" Draco asks a certain drowsy house-elf that is sitting on a straight-backed chair at the kitchen table. The kitchen is silent but for Kreacher's snores.

Kreacher jerks awake when directly addressed and says in a small voice, "Master Harry Potter, filthy half-blood that he is, who is not worthy of Kreacher's servitude, no, is gone to bed. He commands Kreacher to tell a Mr. Draco Malfoy that he is to stay in the bedroom on second floor."

"Right," Draco says, glancing at the clock. "Isn't it a bit _early_ for Potter to be going to bed?"

Kreacher looks at the clock; it reads six p.m.

"Master Harry Potter, who besmirches the noble house of Black and taints its purity with his uncleanness, does not bother to tell Kreacher why he is sleeping so early. He does not bother to tell Kreacher anything, no. Indeed, Master Harry Potter is been sleeping early all the time."

"Okay, then," Draco says. "Could you tell him, when he wakes up, that Draco Malfoy says '_goodbye_'?"

"This will not do, Kreacher thinks," Kreacher whines. "Master Harry Potter says that Kreacher is to push Mr. Draco Malfoy upstairs and lock him into bedroom if need be."

Draco looks at Kreacher, horrified. Kreacher looks squarely back at him.

"That won't be necessary," Draco says. "I'm going upstairs."

"Good," Kreacher says, with a hint of finality.

Kreacher already falling back asleep, Draco leaves the kitchen, slowly climbs the rickety stairs and steps onto the landing. After peering down the dark hallway, he crosses the landing and his hand is resting upon the doorknob of the bedroom when he hears it.

From the closed door opposite, instead of the soothing sounds of slow breathing expected in slumber, there instead emits the unmistakable sound of sobbing.


	5. The Letter

**A/N: **Haha; let me guess. You think that, because I took so long to update, this is going to be a kick-ass chapter with mind-blowing plot twists and the like? Iono, you decide, o reader.

I was considering discontinuing the story, because I saw my subscribers list for this story, _Chain of Hearts_, then I compared it to the reviews for it… Please, guys, if you like it, then REVIEW! If you don't review, I'm going to DIE before I do chapter six!

… So, yeah, in chapter five, it looks like Harry's lost the plot. Rant over.

**Chapter five**

"_What, exactly, are the criteria for being a Horcrux, Harry?" Ginny asked__, nudging him._

"_I don't know," Harry said, tearing his gaze away from the smoldering remains of the fifth Horcrux. "You have to have a bit of Voldemort's soul in you, I guess."_

"_Really?" Ginny asked in a small voice. "His… his soul?"_

"_He has to murder someone to slice his soul," Harry said, putting an arm around her. "Murder literally 'tears the soul apart', so to speak."_

"_Harry…" Ginny's voice was shaking._

_Harry looked into her eyes, and said steadily, "Yeah… what's wrong?"_

"_I know what the sixth Horcrux is," Ginny said, wiping her eyes._

_Ron and Hermione looked up._

"_Merlin," Ron exclaimed. "I'm glad we brought her along, right?"_

_Hermione looked down at the list in her hand. "Is it the Ravenclaw item?"_

"_No," Ginny said, the tears falling faster._

"_Hufflepuff?" Ron tried._

"_No…"_

"_Well, if there's nothing left of Gryffindor, then what else could it be?"_

"_Ron, Hermione… Harry… I – it's me."_

"_What?" three voices chorused._

"_It's me," she repeated, sniffling. "I'm the Horcrux. I've been a Horcrux for five years, since… since the Chamber. I've got – I've got his soul in me."_

_They stared at her in disbelief for what seemed like an eternity._

"_Yeah," Harry said softly, squeezing Ginny's hand as she sobbed. "She's… she's right…"_

**chainofhearts**

Draco froze outside of Harry's door, listening to his barely stifled sobs.

"Ha…Harry?" he called.

There was a loud sniffle, then a muffled "Go away" that could've been Draco's imagination speaking.

"Harry?" Draco called louder.

There was the sound of footsteps, and then a loud thump as Harry threw himself against the door and slid to a sitting position on the floor.

"I said, _go away_, Malfoy!" he screeched.

Draco sighed and left the still-sobbing boy alone in the darkness.

**chainofhearts**

Harry came stumping down the stairs the next morning, puffy-eyed and pale.

"What are you still doing here?" he demanded of Draco, who was innocently sitting at the kitchen table.

"Let's see," Draco mimed thinking hard. "You practically told your elf to lock me in the bedroom if I tried to escape. That might make leaving a little, you know, _difficult_."

Harry rolled his eyes behind his glasses.

"Whatever," he said, throwing himself into a seat across from Draco. "Well, you've invaded on my hospitality for long enough. See you."

"This isn't just _your_ house, Potter," Draco snorted. "This is the headquarters of the Order, and a safe-house, you git. Snape made me swear I'd come back here, so I'm not leaving just because you don't want a house guest. You're being a petulant little brat, you know that? Actually, you remind me of me."

"You're not even _in_ the Order," Harry snapped.

"So?"

"You shouldn't even _be_ here, if you're not in the Order!"

"Well, I'm here, so deal with it."

The two glared at each other, the kitchen table the barrier between them. Harry drew his wand, and Draco, wide-eyed, mouthed 'You wouldn't dare.'

"Wouldn't I?" Harry spat.

They were suddenly interrupted by Kreacher slamming sulkily into the room, a large brown owl sitting atop his head.

"Kreacher has an owl for Master Harry Potter," he snapped. He shook his head and the owl took flight, coming to land on the table between Draco and Harry.

Harry pocketed his wand and untied the letter from the owl's leg. His eyes went wide as he glanced at the name on the front.

Kreacher left the room, bowing low. Draco watched Harry staring at the front of the letter.

"Well?" Draco said, after five impatient minutes. "Aren't you going to open it?"

Harry looked at Draco as if seeing him for the first time. Draco was stunned to see a tear trickle from the corner of one green eye and streak down his cheek.

"This must be some sick joke," Harry muttered, gazing again at the letter. "This… This is Ginny's handwriting."

**chainofhearts**

**A/N:** MUHUHAHAHA!


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